U.s. Officials Consider Killing Drug Kingpins

WASHINGTON — The assassination of major international drug traffickers is under consideration by senior U.S. officials devising aggressive new measures against them.

Encouraged by the president, Congress and a new drug czar demanding stepped-up efforts to deal with the narcotics control, a National Security Council-convened team is seriously considering "military operations" including such actions against "a number of high-value targets," according to a senior administration official.

Should covert attacks on drug traffickers by U.S.-sponsored hit squads be carried out, "American casualties" should be expected, David C. Miller, Jr., the NSC's counter-narcotics specialist, has told congressional aides.

A plan for fighting the drug war abroad, including some forms of covert action against drug kingpins and their operations, is expected to be offered by the NSC panel to President Bush for his signature within a month.

The question of whether drug dealers should be targeted for killing has been controversial in discussions of the NSC panel, whose members include representatives of the State, Justice, Defense and Treasury departments, and the CIA.

A key issue is whether a 1976 presidential order banning U.S. assassinations abroad would be violated by a program aimed at killing major drug dealers.

Bush, CIA director William H. Webster and William J. Bennett, the national drug-policy director, have publicly advocated military action against key drug figures and their operations. But State and Justice department officials, including Drug Enforcement Administration administrator John C. Lawn, have urged caution.

"If Ollie North were still there, they (drug kingpins) would be dying by now," said one source familiar with the task force discussions. He was referring to the former NSC aide who expedited illicit aid to Nicaragua's Contra rebels during the Reagan administration.

"Pro-active strikes" against "narco-terrorists" are said to be strongly advocated in the NSC task force discussions by Bennett, who is chairman of panel.

Last week, a spokesman said Bennett would not comment publicly on the panel's deliberations. But Bennett, when he had responsibility for drug education programs as education secretary, suggested that the U.S. military "should do to the drug barons what our forces in the Persian Gulf did to Iran's navy."

CIA director Webster said at a breakfast meeting with reporters in April that he considers a covert U.S. strike against narcotics traffickers "a legitimate national security device," so long as the decision-making is "thoroughly defendable to the American people."

Last month Webster created a new Counter Narcotics Center at the CIA to "lend analytical and operational support to the effort against international nar cotics trafficking," according to CIA spokesman Bill Devine.

Bush, during the 1988 presidential campaign, said he favored military action against major foreign drug traffickers and their operations if the host country approved the U.S. intervention.

State Department and veteran drug agency officials are holding the traditional view that a 1976 presidential ban on assassinations bars the killing of drug traffickers except in self-defense.

One way to circumvent that ban would be to target drug operations rather than individuals when planning covert attacks on foreign drug cartels. Any deaths would be only incidental to the operation, under that scenario, sketched by advocates of forceful intervention.

When the United States conducted an air strike against Libya in 1986, for example, it was widely considered an assassination attempt against Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi. The United States characterized the bombings as "self defense against a continuing threat."

Another tactic would be to use operatives without detectable ties to the U.S. government to hit major foreign drug dealers, they say. Such mercenaries would make arrangements with foreign governments or individuals to be paid for their services in the forfeited property or seized money of drug kingpins.

But opponents argue that such moves would invite uncontrollable violent reprisals by traffickers. Combat would escalate uncontrollably, one staff participant warned, until "we're back in Vietnam all over again."

"Sending in military units ... risks ... an unpopular confrontation with a powerful and elusive enemy on the enemy's own turf," said Rensselaer Lee III in testimony this week before the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control.

But advocates of violent action offer a more alluring scenario.

"If we could selectively eliminate or neutralize four or five leaders of a cartel at one meeting, we could possibly disrupt their operations for as long as 18 months," said Raphael F. Perl, an international narcotics specialist with the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service who is familiar with the NSC debate.

By comparison, interdicting 7 tons of cocaine _ the total seized in 1988 year by all U.S. drug agencies, according to the House Select Committee on Narcotics _ is "a minor irritant at best to the traffickers," Perl said in an interview.